In my last post I talked about Semalt and why it is important to block referral traffic from certain websites such as Semalt. Today, I will show you several ways of how to completely block them and removing them from your site forever.
To quickly refresh, Semalt is a ‘company’ that is sending crawlers all over the web to every website and is skewing the stats that Google and other search engines use to rank websites. Along with blocking Semalt, I highly recommend you block Kambasoft and Savetubevideo. I suspect these are other fishy tactics used by the same company or another uncouth website.
Below are ways to block Semalt and others. I recommend implementing all of the below tactics if possible.
Block referral traffic in Google Analytics step 1:
- Log in to your Google Analytics account
- Go to the Admin Tab
- Click on Tracking Info
- Go to Referral Exclusion List
- Click + Add Referral Exclusion (red button)
- Type in semalt.com
- Save
- Click + Add Referral Exclusion (red button)
- Type in *.semalt.com
- Save
- Repeat process for kambasoft.com and savetubevideo.com and others.
Block referral traffic in Google Analytics step 2:
- Log in to your Google Analytics account
- Go to the Admin Tab
- Click on Filters
- Click + New Filter (red button)
- Create new filter
- Name it (Exclude semalt.com)
- Click: Custom Filter
- Filter Field: Referral
- Filter Pattern: semalt.com
- Save
- Repeat process for kambasoft.com and savetubevideo.com and others
Below are a couple of very advanced ways of blocking referring traffic from visiting your site.
How to block Semalt and others with htaccess version 1:
# BLOCK SEMALT / KAMBASOFT / SAVETUBEVIDEO #
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?semalt.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.semalt.com [L]
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?savetubevideo.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.savetubevideo.com [L]
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?kambasoft.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.kambasoft.com [L]
</IfModule>
How to block Semalt and others with htaccess version 2:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://([^.]+\.)*semalt\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ([^.]+)\.semalt\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://([^.]+\.)*savetubevideo\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} savetubevideo\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ([^.]+)\.savetubevideo\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://([^.]+\.)*kambasoft\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} kambasoft\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ([^.]+)\.kambasoft\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
</IfModule>
How to block Semalt and others with web.config
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule>
<conditions>
<add input=”{HTTP_REFERER}” pattern=”*.kambasoft.com*” negate=”false” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Redirect” url=”http://www. kambasoft.com “/>
</rule>
<rule name=”RequestBlockingRule2″ patternSyntax=”Wildcard” stopProcessing=”true”>
<match url=”*” />
<conditions>
<add input=”{HTTP_REFERER}” pattern=”*.semalt.com*” negate=”false” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Redirect” url=”http://www.semalt.com”/>
</rule>
<rule name=”RequestBlockingRule3″ patternSyntax=”Wildcard” stopProcessing=”true”>
<match url=”*” />
<conditions>
<add input=”{HTTP_REFERER}” pattern=”*.savetubevideo.com*” negate=”false” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Redirect” url=”http://www. savetubevideo.com “/>
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
If you need assistance with including this in your SEO strategy then please feel free to contact us today!